Disclaimer: I am not a professional player, nor am I especially good. Taking my advice may or may not improve your gameplay.

You had 3 barracks at 22:00. I believe your highest marine count at any point in the game was 33.

33 is a really small number of marines, especially against a player who builds a lot of zerglings and a few supplementary banelings.

Your 4 hellions do almost nothing, three of them die to two queens and the last one holds a watch tower for approx 4 minutes before dying to zerglings. Keep your hellions alive, deny creep and check frequently for his third base.

Think of Marines as the backbone of most Terran compositions. They kill everything Zerg has and all other units you make and to ensure that your marines survive to kill stuff. Tanks kill Banelings, Ghosts/Marauders/Vikings kill broodlords. Thors make mutas less annoying.

With 2 Reactor Barracks and one Tech lab barracks you don't really have an army that can deal with a lot of zerglings and mutas.

I'm sure there are some other points in your play that you could improve upon, but these were the things that stuck out to me the most.

I'm also a diamond terran, I've been working on my TvZ a lot recently so I'll try to give you some insight and some of the stuff I've been working on too.

1) You did a reactor hellion expand... whenever you do that, you need to build two marines from your barracks. You only built one this game, and your barracks was idle for a while.

2) You lost 3 of your 4 hellions! This is terrible and you should never let this happen. The whole point of a reactor hellion expand is not to do damage, but to have map control and deny a fast 3rd base. You rushed your first two hellions to the zerg's mineral line; a better thing to do would be to kill any stray zerglings (there were 2 in your natural), clear the watchtowers, and park at the edge of the zerg's creep. This forces queens, zerglings, and spines. Try to keep them alive as long as you can. Luckily for you this game, the zerg overreacted to your hellions and did the normal response despite killing most of your hellions.

3) When you switch your factory off of the reactor, build 3 raxes, not 2 and start stim as soon as you can. If you are playing a more defensive style then you can delay stim, but the third for this map is far away and I don't like sitting back and macroing... this is a personal preference, though. The important idea is that you need stim to push out unless you are pushing early.

4) You are floating 1k minerals at 9:30. If you had built a 3rd rax (2 reactors, 1 tech lab) and a CC then your money wouldn't be so high. Always make scvs and tanks and marines! Macro macro macro!

5) Your engineering bay went down at 10 minutes. If you aren't going to do an early push then you need to get it earlier. Upgrades are what will keep you in the game vs a macro zerg.

6) Generally, you want to add your second factory when you take your third base. You took it on two bases.

7) You pushed out at 13 minutes. Ask yourself: What do you want to accomplish with this push? What timings do you want to hit? Some common ones are spire timings and third base timings. It doesn't look like you were trying to hit either of those. You moved to hit the zerg's third base, which was the correct decision. You need combat shield though!

8) You killed his third base, which is a victory for you. However, your third isn't even up! At best you are both on even ground now. Your push got totally rolled; this is actually to be expected at this point. You killed his third base; the correct response would be to go home immediately and establish your third.

Another tip: keep your siege tanks on hotkey 2, marines + medivacs on 1. During an engagement, hit 2, hold shift, and right click on banelings. (Focus firing) The job of the siege tanks is to clear out the banelings so that your marines can kill everything else without getting blown up.

9) At this point, a good zerg would deny your third forever with ling/baneling. You need to take it way earlier than you did.

10) Your starport went down at 18:00! You really need medivacs to pressure and drop. Get them earlier, before your second factory. Personally, I always go for 5 rax (4 reactor, 1 tech lab), 2 fact (tech labs), and 1 starport (reactor) on 3 bases.

It's worth noting that at this point, you've lost the game already. You lost the game as soon as you delayed your 3rd for so long. The zerg can just throw cheap units at you and deny your third forever, and you'll be starved on two bases.

11) Your macro falters under pressure. Even the best of the best struggle with this, so it's ok. Just try not to let it happen.

12) Your marine count is low the entire game. You need more raxes!

I'm going to stop at 18:40, because at this point you already lost the game. You needed to take your third faster and commit less to the push that you made. If you strike a major blow, like killing an expo, GO HOME. You do not have to strike a killing blow here; you couldn't have, anyway. Also, you need to macro better. You could have had so much more stuff than your opponent!

Yes loosing the hellions was silly and almost never happens. In fact it was the main reason why i choose not to commit to my 2 tank push. I always forget my starport and i believe it is because of what you pointed out, that i got my factory to early. I then lack the excess gas to trigger the starport alert in my brain.

When would be a good time to get my starport and my third. After reading your comments i realize that that is most likely why TvZ is so weird for me. I don't have a solid build plan.

Also i my push at 13min was to kill his third. What timings exists in TvZ?

On February 20 2012 08:49 Tengil wrote:Thank you CTangent and Yuna for your reply.

Yes loosing the hellions was silly and almost never happens. In fact it was the main reason why i choose not to commit to my 2 tank push. I always forget my starport and i believe it is because of what you pointed out, that i got my factory to early. I then lack the excess gas to trigger the starport alert in my brain.

When would be a good time to get my starport and my third. After reading your comments i realize that that is most likely why TvZ is so weird for me. I don't have a solid build plan.

Also i my push at 13min was to kill his third. What timings exists in TvZ?

Most Diamond Zergs go for mutas at the 10-12 mark. I do a 1 reaper FE into a mass marine push/drop that hits with 2 medivacs and a large man's handful of marines. If the zerg went for an early third or is saving up for mutas, he won't have many units. I have 2 replays of it on drop.sc . Search my name, SFNoisyNinja if you want to watch them and see how they are done.

Don't make tank or make tank very late. Focus on marines/ hellion. Learn to split. Once you master the split marine, you'll have easy time vs zerg. Focus double upgrade for marines early game too. Use hellion to stop zerg from getting 3rd as long as possible(6 hellions can kill infinity speedling if you micro well). Practice muta defend, don't spam turret, use 2 group of marines to catch muta flying around. Expand like zerg late game, very easy just make PF and 3-4 turrets.

I am a diamond terran player as well and have been having trouble with TvZ, but heres some good news: essentially you are doing things right, you just need a few changes and you would have easily steamrolled this zerg. His macro was pretty subpar, and vs a higher level diamond zerg you would have had more trouble because his drone count would have been >50 after he killed your hellions and his mutas woudl have been earlier.

The game went wrong for a few reasons

1) losing the hellions early: I have struggled with the proper decisions for using the hellion openers, and I think that there are definitely good openings sometimes to run hellions in, however you really need to be confident that you can do damage AND keep your macro/production up. Drones can be refreshed pretty easily, and it will only work against him if you can put together a nice punishing timing after the hellions fried some drones..so this requires you to keep a lot of your macro up. If you cannot, and I would say most of us struggle with this...go the safe route and just patrol the hellions on the edge of the creep and keep actively checking the minimap and keep them alive, deny creep and once ina while poke at the lings/queens. go home or to the watchtowers once the lings get out of control.

2) Build Order after the hellions. you definitely needed to add 2 rax after the hellions popped, not 1. This gives you stim and when your natural gets going you will explode a bit in economy so a 2nd reactored barrack is necessary. I like your tank/stim push, so you can go ahead and get the engi bay a tad later, ( after rax are done, when you have the minerals/you forsee a supply problem that comes for us people with not perfect macro while microing hellions )

3) Scouting as relates to unit composition.. Your attacks are FINE. You will start beating zergs without worrying too much about your attacks for now, worry about fine tuning micro when this stuff is fixed. When you go out to attack though, i highly reccomend keeping tabs on both how much the zerg is making, and what he is making. You also need to find out around when his lair is finishing to prepare for turrets. you NEED to know how big his muta count is growing to put down the right amount of turrets and know when to start into thors. Overall, your marine count was too low, you had too many tanks even after the big engagement at the third, and your third was a little too late.Y

In all honesty you are better than this guy, you just need to clean up your Build order a bit, work on maintaining your macro with controlling hellions/small armies ( this is really hard and it just takes a lot of playing and practice, I'm pretty sure even masters terrans struggle with this), and keep better tabs on what the zerg is going and where his army is. Just slightly more preparedness for the mutas, not losing the hellions...game would have been 100% different. But going forward keep all these things in mind and you should be all good to go until you hit the next wall for terran ( army control is sooo hard lol.)

On February 22 2012 06:34 Blodge wrote:Ya i'm in the same boat, I rarely beat zerg playing standard. But i do have a high winrate with proxy bunker rushes. lol.

Anyways...

I do a reactor hellion FE opening and....

My main problem is that zergs will wall off with evo chamber 2 spines and queens. They will build very few units and saturate both their bases very quickly.

I always end up behind. What are my options here?

There are a number different strategies after hellion expand. You´re not supposed to expect loads of kills with the 4 hellions, they are mainly to scout, deny creep and most importantly deny an early third. If you feel he tries to defend with nothing but 2 spines, then make marauders and continue hellions, research stim and hit him with hellion marauder. You want to have 4-6 marauders and 8-10 hellions and hit around 8.30, so you don´t risk running into mutas. Try to hide your marauders and the fact that you continued making hellions.

You can make a few banshees to force spores and keep him busy while taking an early 3rd. You could get a fast medivac and drop them in his main where there probably arent any spines, or use the medivac as an elevator on cliffside and drop both hellions and marines.

Anyways the main point is that you dont have to stress about zerg having early natural and saturated it quick - it´s once he gets an early 3rd or 4th you want to do something about it. Denying the 3rd/4th over and over can win you alot of tvz games. Personally I´ve met alot of zergs that simply quits after their expo was sniped for the 4th time, even though I never really killed many drones, tech buildings or even alot of units.

(WOW OK, im super sorry, i fucked my audio for this vod and had it recording from two sources. Hopefully its not too annoying and it can still be useful...)

Consensus: You played pretty well man. You had a few engagements that positionally favored the zerg and didn't have enough defense at your third base. I go much more into this in the replay review but realistically they are a lot of small things you can do to generally improve your survivability against zerg while still having the ability to put on pressure.

Hi, im a mid-master zerg player, so im maybe not the best advisor on TvZ but i have got some advice. Pretty much the only thing i lose to is if the game drags on too long and he's ultra def and go mass ghost+marine armies OR ur strat but with ALOT more drops, drop everywhere, feel like pushing? drop in the main while doing it, 1 medvac, 2 is even better. Marines can't be killed if they're in a sweet spot with a medivac, not by lings. Blings are slow and hes gonna need them to handle your push, u WILL do damage if you do it right. atleast if ur up against me, it's so hard to handle it because marines will tear a zergs tech buildings to pieces. Other then my drop suggestion there are some obvious things, as the game progresses 1 turret wont do you much good, i loved the thor, if i can't jaedong my mutas, 4 or 5 turrets isn't really something i want to be getting into with my valuable mutas. Orbital on your third with basically no defenses (bunkers, block) is just a bit too balsy, play a bit more safe, if i was in your situation and downed his third i would just smack him once more with a sweet sweet slow push combined with a drop, maybe after taking a third i dunno, im a bad terran. ps. So BM xDtl;dr: More drops!